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“I can, therefore I must”: Fragility in the upper-middle classes
SUNIYA S. LUTHAR, SAMUEL H. BARKIN, AND ELIZABETH J. CROSSMAN
Teachers College, Columbia University
Abstract
We review evidence on a group recently identified as “at risk,” that is, youth in upwardly mobile, upper-middle class community contexts. These youngsters
are statisticallymore likely than normative samples to show serious disturbance across several domains including drug and alcohol use, as well as internalizing
and externalizing problems. Extant data on these problems are reviewed with attention to gender-specific patterns, presenting quantitative developmental
research findings along with relevant evidence across other disciplines. In considering possible reasons for elevated maladjustment, we appraise multiple
pathways, including aspects of family dynamics, peer norms, pressures at schools,and policies in higher education. All of these pathways are consideredwithin
the context of broad, exosystemic mores: the pervasive emphasis, in contemporary American culture, on maximizing personal status,and how this can threaten
the well-being of individuals and of communities. We then discuss issues that warrant attention in future research. The paper concludes with suggestions for
interventions at multiple levels, targeting youth, parents, educators, as well as policymakers, toward reducing pressures and maximizing positive adaptation
among “privileged but pressured” youth and their families.
This paper is about a counterintuitive notion: that upper-middle
class youth, who are en route to the most prestigious universities
and well-paying careers in America, are more likely to be more
troubled than their middle-class counterparts. Youth in poverty
are widely recognized as being “at risk,” but increasingly,
significant problems have been seen at the other end of the
socioeconomic continuum. We describe insights on the types
of problems documented among teens in relatively affluent
communities and explore reasons for their vulnerability.
Our presentation through this paper is guided by the central
tenets of developmental psychopathology (Cicchetti, 1984), a
field that has grown exponentially since the first publication of
this journal 25 years ago (Cicchetti, 1989,2013). First, we
consider how the scientific understanding of normative devel-
opmental processes (e.g., during adolescence) can illuminate
phenomena in atypical contexts (in this case, affluence), as
well as the reverse. Second, we draw on evidence from multi-
ple disciplines, with quantitative developmental findings but-
tressed by qualitative data from our own focus groups, and
more broadly, by related evidence from other fields including
anthropology, sociology, social and clinical psychology, pub-
lic health, and economics. Third, we consider intervention im-
plications deriving from the accumulated knowledge base,
along with critical issues in disseminating future research find-
ings to stakeholders outside of academia.
Discussions in this paper begin with operational defini-
tions of central constructs, followed by descriptions of major
findings in existing research. Next, we consider causes of
high distress among upper-middle class youth, considering
forces in families and in communities. We then explore
why youth in affluence might be more vulnerable today
than in previous generations, and we appraise why the “cul-
ture of affluence” can compromise well-being. The paper
concludes with discussions on future directions for research,
as well as for preventive interventions and policy.
Clarifying Central Constructs: Affluence and At Risk
Designation
At the outset, we provide two important clarifications, the first
explicating whom we are writing about as we describe our
programmatic research. Our samples have been from commu-
nities predominated by white-collar, well-educated parents.
They attend schools distinguished by rich academic curricula,
high standardized test scores, and diverse extracurricular op-
portunities; as a group, they are bound for some of the most
selective colleges and ultimately, the most high-status jobs.
In these communities, parents’ annual incomes are well
over twice the national average, with median estimates of
$110,000–155,000. In our past reports, we have interchange-
ably referred to these samples as affluent, socioeconomically
privileged, or high socioeconomic status (SES); on average,
they clearly are, although within any given community, there
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Suniya S. Luthar, De-
partment of Psychology, Arizona State University, 900 South McAllister
Road, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104; E-mail: sluthar@asu.edu.
We are deeply grateful to students who have participated in this programmatic
research over the years and to the parents, teachers, and school administrators
who, in their respective communities, paved the way for in-depth assessments
of youths and families. Their proactive, forward-thinkingin itiatives have contrib-
uted immeasurably to developmental science. Heartfelt thanks also to Dante Cic-
chetti for the invitation to participate in this milestone Special Issue, to students in
our laboratory at Teachers College for help with background research, and to
Nina L. Kumar for invaluable insights on pressures affecting today’s youth.
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01DA014385
and R13 MH082592). Suniya S. Luthar is now at Arizona State University
Development and Psychopathology 25 (2013), 1529–1549
#Cambridge University Press 2013
doi:10.1017/S0954579413000758
1529
are inevitably variations of family income ( just as there are
for children in poverty).
The second clarification pertains to what we mean by “at
risk.” In studies of risk and resilience, the notion of risk is de-
fined in terms of statistical probabilities (Luthar, Cicchetti, &
Becker, 2000; Masten, 2001), wherein the incidence of prob-
lems is statistically higher in the presence of a particular con-
dition (such as parent depression) than in other youth. Not all
children of depressed parents are troubled; it is just that paren-
tal depression heightens vulnerability. Similarly, not all afflu-
ent youth are distressed, but an unusually large proportion
shows serious levels of maladjustment, relative to parallel
rates in national normative samples.
Our first glimpse of these problems in this group was ser-
endipitous, based on data collected in the mid-1990s among
students recruited as a comparison sample for inner-city teens
(Luthar & D’Avanzo, 1999). Affluent youngsters were signif-
icantly higher than their low-SES counterparts on all sub-
stance use indicators: use of cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana,
and hard drugs, with the lowest levels of abstinence among
high-SES girls. These findings were replicated a decade later
among 10th graders in a different Northeast suburb (Luthar &
Goldstein, 2008). In recent years, other researchers have cor-
roborated these findings, showing high alcohol use, binge
drinking, and marijuana use in areas with mostly well-edu-
cated, White, high-income, two-parent families (Botticello,
2009; Patrick, Wightman, Schoeni, & Schulenberg, 2012;Re-
boussin, Preisser, Song, & Wolfson, 2010; Song et al., 2009).
By all accounts, these trends get worse through college, as
indicated by the National Center on Addiction and Substance
Abuse at Columbia University (CASA). Surveys of colleges
across the country revealed that as compared to the general
population, full-time students were 2.5 times more likely to
meet diagnostic criteria of substance abuse or dependence
(23% vs. 9%), and half of all full-time college students re-
ported binge drinking and abuse of illegal or prescription drugs
(CASA, 2007). Over 80% of students in this sample character-
ized their schools as highly competitive or competitive.
Substance use is not the only “errant behavior” among
youth in upwardly mobile settings: they also report elevated
rule breaking. Whereas crime is widely assumed to be a prob-
lem of teens in poverty, Luthar and Ansary (2005) found that
average levels of delinquency were comparable among subur-
ban and very low SES, inner-city adolescents. What varied
was the particular types of rule breaking: suburban youth en-
dorsed random acts of delinquency such as stealing from par-
ents or peers, whereas the inner-city teens indicated behaviors
potentially needed for self-defense, such as carrying a
weapon. Echoing these findings, Lund and Dearing (2012)
showed that neighborhood affluence was associated with
high delinquency among boys.
Resonant are reports of cheating at top-notch schools and
colleges, encompassing not just isolated cheating on exami-
nations but also larger, organized schemes (Pe
´rez-Pen
˜a&
Bidgood, 2012). In an affluent, suburban community, high-
achieving adolescents reportedly impersonated other less dis-
tinguished students during college admission (SATand ACT)
tests, for fees ranging from $500 to $3,600 (Anderson & Ap-
plebome, 2011). Harvard University recently expelled 70 stu-
dents (one-quarter of a large lecture class) in “its largest
cheating scandal in memory” (Pe
´rez-Pen
˜a, 2013), and in col-
leges across the country, between 20% and 40% of students
E-mail assignments to their parents for editing or revising
(Hofer & Moore, 2010). Among graduate students, half or
more admitted to some form of cheating within the previous
year (McCabe, Butterfield, & Trevino, 2006).
Our studies have also shown elevations compared to na-
tional norms in serious internalizing problems. Following
Luthar and D’Avanzo’s (1999) reports that one in five girls
indicated clinically significant levels of self-reported depres-
sion, subsequent studies have shown higher rates, compared
to norms, of serious depressive, anxiety, and somatic symp-
toms among affluent adolescent girls as well as boys (Luthar
& Barkin, 2012; Luthar & Becker, 2002; Luthar & Goldstein,
2008). Lund and Dearing (2012) found that neighborhood af-
fluence was associated with high anxiety–depression among
girls.
Our early studies were confined to suburbs on the East
Coast, and recently we examined the geographic generaliz-
ability of affluent youths’ problems across three high school
samples: an East Coast suburban public school, an exclusive
private school in a large East Coast city, and a suburban pub-
lic school in the Northwest (Luthar & Barkin, 2012). Both
East Coast samples showed pronounced elevations in sub-
stance use, with rates of being drunk in the past month, for ex-
ample, about twice those in national norms. In the Northwest-
ern suburban group, substance use was not as extreme; yet
these youth showed marked elevations in clinically signifi-
cant internalizing and externalizing symptoms, reported rela-
tively low closeness with their parents, and as described in an-
other report (Yates, Tracy, & Luthar, 2008), tendencies to
self-injurious behaviors such as self-cutting and burning.
There is little reason to believe that the problems of afflu-
ent youth end upon completion of high school. Based on sur-
veys and in-depth interviews, Marano (2008) reports that col-
lege counseling centers are dealing with unprecedented
numbers of students with serious problems including not
just substance abuse but also unipolar or bipolar depression,
anxiety and eating disorders, and nonsuicidal self-injury. In
addition to contending with strenuous curricula, psychiatric
breakdowns may derive from built-up stresses from the 18
years of trying to achieve admission to top-tier colleges, and
also because students cannot get the level of psychiatric care
that parents ensured while they were still at home (Hofer &
Moore, 2010). Problems have reached the point that student
mental health is considered “one of the top five critical issues
on campuses” nationwide (Marano, 2008,p.144).
To summarize, we have seen one or more signs of elevated
maladjustment across all high-SES adolescent cohorts exam-
ined thus far, and across different geographic settings. Each of
these groups has shown high rates of problems compared to
national norms in one or more domains of substance use or
S. S. Luthar, S. H. Barkin, and E. J. Crossman1530
rates of clinically significant internalizing and externalizing
symptoms. Although not systematically documented yet in
replicated, quantitative comparisons with norms, it appears
that these problems continue well into college.
Developmental trends
As a group, affluent youth seem no more troubled than others
prior to adolescence: the first signs of emerging problems are
at around the seventh grade, when they are almost 13. Luthar
and Becker (2002) found that is the seventh grade, 7% of boys
were (a) using marijuana and (b) getting drunk at least once a
month; this was also when we saw elevations in significant
depressive and anxiety symptoms among both boys and girls.
Why do problems emerge in the seventh grade? It is un-
likely to be just because of the stresses of being in the large, im-
personal setting of middle school (see Eccles, Midgley, & Ad-
ler, 1984), because few problems have been seen among sixth
graders (Lund & Dearing, 2012; Luthar & Becker, 2002;Lu-
thar & Latendresse, 2005a). Likely implicated are the norma-
tive developmental processes of adolescence, negotiated in
the “atypical” context of affluence. Early adolescents increas-
ingly seek independence from parents, and high-SES parents
are prone to leaving them unsupervised, with the believed se-
curity of “good neighborhoods and schools” (Luthar, 2003).
More than ever before, these teens seek to be popular with
peers, and the affluent peer group actively endorses counter-
conventional behaviors (discussed more later). With the capac-
ity for abstract thinking, adolescents begin identity exploration,
facing the critical questions of “Who am I?” and, more impor-
tantly, “What will I amount to?” Finally, it is at about age 13 that
hormonal changes of puberty make their advent. The increasing
salience of all these developmental issues across adolescence
probably accounts for escalating signs of trouble thus far docu-
mented among affluent youth beginning with the teen years.
Understanding Mechanisms: “Conduits” of Risk,
Vulnerability, and Protection
In resilience research, once a broad risk factor has been iden-
tified, we begin to disentangle questions of “why or how”; ac-
cordingly, we now consider processes occurring in the context
of affluence that might exacerbate risks to youth. As Garcia
Coll et al. (1996) presciently argued, in research on little-stud-
ied groups, we must consider not just well-known risks that
affect all children (such as alienation from parents) but also
subculture-specific ones (such as discrimination for ethnic
minority youth), operating in addition to the “usual suspects.”
Reasons for substance use
We begin our consideration of risk mechanisms by discussing
causes specific to high substance use, consistently identified
as a problem among upper-middle class youth, and we then
appraise factors that might lead also to other disturbances,
or risk factors demonstrating multifinality (cf. Cicchetti &
Rogosch, 1996). Some experimentation with alcohol and
drugs is developmentally normative for all teens, but logisti-
cally, affluent youth are able to use more frequently and heavily.
They have easy access to substances and have ample money
(Hanson & Chen, 2007), efficient systems involving instant
messaging, fake IDs (of the best quality), knowledge of local
providers (often peers), and cars that allow quick acquisition
(Chase, 2008; Luthar & Barkin, 2012; Marano, 2008).
In addition, there is collusion from some parents. There is
a nontrivial group of teens who affirm not only that they will
face few repercussions if parents discover excessive sub-
stance use (i.e., low expected “containment”) but even that
parents will actively bail them out if discovered by authorities
(Luthar & Barkin, 2012). CASA’s (2006) survey of teens
showed that about 50% of youth indicated that drugs, alcohol,
or both were available at their parties, whereas 80% of parents
believed that parties were entirely substance free.
Also implicated are peer mores and norms: “getting
wasted” is often what is entirely expected at social gatherings.
Marano (2005) provides an excellent description of common-
place rituals organized around substance use, including “beer
pong” (Ping-Pong, but with a lost point implying a swigged
drink), “beer bongs” (large containers with pipes for efficient
consumption), and “pregaming” (drinking before a party, to
feel relaxed on arrival). Inebriation is not just normative; it
is often socially desirable (Mason & Spoth, 2011). Among
college students, Califano (2007) describes what has become
a “Roman bacchanalia featuring excessive drinking and pro-
miscuous sex” (p. 48) during annual spring break trips to ex-
pensive resort locales, too often resulting in rape, sexually
transmitted diseases, and increasingly and tragically, death.
Why are these affluent youth, as a group, driven to do this
in excess? The single biggest factor is pressure: a common
credo is “Work hard, play hard!” These youngsters expect
to excel at school and extracurriculars and also in their social
lives. High-octane achievement performance is translated
into leisure time, with the attendant alcohol and drug use. CA-
SA’s (2012) survey established that “[t]he number one source
of stress for teens is academic pressure, including pressure to
do well in school and to get into college,” and among college
students, reducing stress was the most common reason of-
fered for drinking, drug use, and smoking (47%, 46%, and
38%, respectively; CASA, 2007).
Logically, the next central question that warrants consid-
eration is why affluent youth might experience so much stress
and pressure. In discussions that follow, therefore, we ap-
praise in turn, the web of factors that collectively eventuate
in youth being “privileged but pressured,” that is, those dem-
onstrating equifinality (cf. Cicchetti & Rogosch, 1996).
Pressures to excel: Multiply determined
In upwardly mobile communities, the cultural ethos inordi-
nately emphasizes stellar all-round achievements at school.
For children and parents alike, it is nearly impossible to ig-
nore the ubiquitous, pervasive message emblazoned from
Fragility among the affluent 1531
their early years onward: there is one path to ultimate happi-
ness—having money—that in turn comes from attending
prestigious colleges. By junior high and high school, devel-
oping impressive school resumes becomes a driving force.
In our early efforts to disentangle sources of pressure, we
and others (Rosenfeld & Wise, 2000) assumed that “overin-
volvement” in extracurricular activities was a critical factor,
but we found that among eighth graders, time in extracurricu-
lars was not a major risk factor in itself (Luthar, Shoum, &
Brown, 2006). What mattered more was the sense of pressure,
criticism, and overly high expectations from adults. Thus, the
sheer number of hours in activities may in fact be correlated
with distress or loneliness (e.g., Randall & Bohnert, 2012),
but its effects are explained away when also considering, in
multivariate analyses, high experienced pressure from parents
and low connectedness with them. This is apparently true
even among extremely overextended high school juniors
and seniors (Luthar & Barkin, 2012).
It is critical to note that pressures to succeed come not just
from parents but as much, if not more so, from outside the
family. Coaches and arts teachers, for example, can be highly
invested in the performer’s star status, setting exacting and
sometimes extreme standards in quests for their teams’ dis-
tinction at the district, county, and state levels. Peer group
comparisons also contribute, because teens rank themselves
against each other in extracurriculars as in academics. As
one all-round achiever explained in our focus groups, “We
as students tend to compare ourselves. After almost every
test I’ve taken, someone has asked me how I did, and to be
honest I’ve asked the same myself. . . . I don’t particularly
like the notion of competing but I do want to get into certain
schools and to win certain awards.”
The role of parents
Before proceeding, we must reiterate what we emphasize re-
peatedly: that affluent parents as a group are neither neglect-
ful nor disparaging (Luthar & Barkin, 2012; Luthar & Laten-
dresse, 2005b). It is not family wealth per se, but rather, is
living in the cultural context of affluence, that connotes risks
(see Lund & Dearing, 2012).
This said, it bears noting that affluent youth on average do
not feel closer to their parents than very low-income youth (Lu-
thar & Latendresse, 2005b). Across various dimensions, subur-
ban sixth graders from affluent, mostly two-parent Caucasian
families rated parent–child relationships no more positively
than did their low-SES counterparts generally from single-par-
ent, ethnic minority households, and living in harsh conditions
of poverty. In the affluent community just as in the low-income
one, some children felt quite distant from their parents.
Beyond closeness to parents, as noted earlier, we have tried
to capture “contextually salient” family processes in our pro-
grammatic work with affluent youth; that is, forces that are (a)
potent in and (b) largely unique to the subculture of affluence.
Findings have shown that laissez-faire monitoring is a particu-
larly powerful predictor. In middle school, youth who rou-
tinely had no adult supervision after school (true of almost half
of seventh-grade boys, and 25% of girls) were among the most
vulnerable, reporting high substance use, delinquency, and de-
pressive/anxiety symptoms (Luthar & Becker, 2002). Of par-
allel importance in high school was parents’ knowledge of
their children’s whereabouts outside school. With regard to
substance use in particular, the single most robust predictor
has been low parent containment; high schoolers who antici-
pate meager consequences from their parents are clearly
among the heaviest users (Luthar & Barkin, 2012).
We have also measured two constructs that capture the pre-
dicament of these families (and youth) with highly demand-
ing work lives. The first is perceived parent “commitment,” or
the belief that the child is her parents’ central priority, over and
above their careers and other pursuits (Luthar & Goldstein,
2008). The second is perceived parent values. When children
believe that their parents disproportionately value their succes-
ses (e.g., in grades and future careers) over their integrity (kind-
ness and respect), they show elevated symptoms (Luthar &
Becker, 2002). For these children, perceived parents’ pride in
them, and thus their own self-worth, rests largely and perilously
on achieving and maintaining “star status” (Miller, 1995).
In terms of discrete parenting behaviors that are powerful,
we find, as resilience research has recurrently shown (Luthar,
Crossman, & Small, in press), that “bad is stronger than good”
(Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Findenauer, & Vohs, 2001). Social
psychologists have established that disparaging words can
have much stronger effects than words of praise or affection,
by as much as a factor of three (Frederickson & Losada,
2005). In parallel, we have found that perceived parent criti-
cism shows stronger links with diverse adjustment indices as
compared to family indices of a positive valence, such as
strong attachment (Luthar & Barkin, 2012).
Peers’ values: Some dubious validations
Suburban boys with high substance use enjoy high peer sta-
tus, being frequently nominated as “liked most” by classmates.
We have documented these associations in middle and high
school samples, and links have remained significant despite
statistical controls for several possible confounds (Becker &
Luthar, 2007; Luthar & D’Avanzo, 1999). Similar links are
seen among girls, but in this case, substance use is also asso-
ciated with many “liked least” nominations, indicating gen-
der-based double standards in affluent peers’ perceptions of
substance use (see Chase, 2008).
Aggression is also tied to high peer status among these
youth. Becker and Luthar (2007) found significant peer ad-
miration for girls also rated by peers as aggressive toward oth-
ers, confirming the social dominance of “mean girls” (LaFon-
tana & Cillessen, 2002; Simmons, 2002). Parallel associations
among boys were found but they were not as pronounced; in
addition, among males, it was physical rather than relational
aggression that was linked with peers’ admiration.
Attractiveness is generally linked with popularity, but this
is startlingly so for affluent girls (Becker & Luthar, 2007).
S. S. Luthar, S. H. Barkin, and E. J. Crossman1532
The average peer admiration score of suburban girls rated as
attractive was almost two and a half standard deviations
higher than the group mean, and attractiveness alone ex-
plained 18% of variance in their peers’ admiration scores.
Consistent are reports by Chase (2008) showing that girls of-
ten demean other girls’ appearance, while boys speak in both
favorable and unfavorable terms, “wanting to have sex with
them if they are ‘hot’ or making fun of them if they are
‘ugly’ or ‘fat’” (Chase, 2008, p. 63). It is not surprising, there-
fore, that these girls can be inordinately preoccupied with
their physical attractiveness.
In college, the role of peers in excessive substance use is
profound (Marano, 2005). Surveys by CASA (2007) showed
that male students at beach destinations on spring break con-
sumed an average of 18 drinks the previous day, while female
students consumed an average of 10 drinks. Seventy-five per-
cent of the men reported being intoxicated at least once a day,
as did 40% of the women. More than half of the college men
and 40% of the college women drank until they were sick or
passed out.
Gender-specific risks
Clearly, girls face enormous pressure from the peer group,
including the gender-based differential judgments, previously
noted, around substance use and physical attractiveness. In yet
another set of double standards, “hooking up” with different
sexual partners engenders peer admiration and respect for
boys, but for girls, it frequently elicits disdain (Chase,
2008; Khan, 2011).
Girls also face high, and often competing, demands from
adults, expected to succeed every bit as much as boys in do-
mains that are traditionally male such as academics and
sports, and in the “feminine” domains of caring and kindness
(Hinshaw & Kranz, 2009). They report higher parent contain-
ment—stringent repercussions—than boys for misdemeanors
ranging from rudeness to delinquency (Luthar & Goldstein,
2008). Furthermore, these girls must master each of these
competing demands with ease, achieving “effortless perfec-
tionism,” that is, being “smart, accomplished, fit, beautiful,
and popular” all without visible effort (Wyler, 2003, para.
13; see also Ruane, 2012).
It is not surprising, therefore, that our daughters are more
troubled than our sons, reflecting elevated problems across
multiple maladjustment domains. Compared to national
norms, these young women show higher rates of serious
symptoms not only in the “traditionally female problems”
of depression and anxiety, but also in the more typically
male problems of rule breaking, delinquency, and alcohol
and drug misuse (see Luthar & Barkin, 2012). This is disturb-
ing because comorbid disorders generally have poor long-
term prognosis (Crawford et al., 2008).
Insufficiently explored, thus far, are some areas in which
affluent boys could be particularly at risk: intense preoccupa-
tion with power, which is in turn tied to money and sex.
Through high school, social dominance is related to good
looks and athletics, followed by the “cool” factor of substance
use (Becker & Luthar, 2007; Chase, 2008). In college, more
than even attractiveness, social status is linked to wealth.
Moneyed young men are most likely to achieve the ultimate
alpha male status of being desired as sexual partners by
many girls. Thus, these young men may struggle to create a
sense of sexuality separate from their financial prowess
(Khan, 2011).
What remains to be determined are long-term costs as
these boys strive ever harder to be at the top, or in their ver-
nacular, to be “the big man on campus” (Chase, 2008,
p. 55) or a “baller”: one whose status in society has been
earned by one’s possession of “game” (typically connoting
sexual conquests). Plausible fallouts include low capacity
for authentic caring at the least and at the worst, chauvinistic,
callous attitudes toward women. Affluent adolescents agree
that in relating to the opposite sex, boys generally want sex
while the girls want relationships: “One boy says he will
tell a girl, ‘I’ll still care about you. Nothing will change.’
These are the bullshit lines we use. And they work!” (Chase
2008, p. 55).
Mothers and fathers: Role models and caregivers
A longstanding and inarguable tenet in child development is
that children model what they observe in their same-sex par-
ents. Accordingly, we consider parallels between young wo-
men in affluent contexts and their mothers, and similarly, be-
tween boys and their fathers.
One of the first parallels between upper-middle class
young women and their mothers is perfectionism. The ideali-
zation of motherhood in America has promulgated standards
of perfection that are beyond unrealistic (Slaughter, 2012).
Douglas and Michaels (2004, p. 325) comment on expecta-
tions of well-educated mothers: “to be, simultaneously, inde-
pendent, achievement-oriented, successful, the equal to any
man and yet appealing to men, selfless, accommodating, nur-
turing, the connective tissue that holds all families together,
and of course, slim and beautiful. We really were supposed
to become some hybrid between Mother Teresa, Donna Sha-
lala, Martha Stewart, and Cindy Crawford.” Achieving effort-
less perfectionism, therefore, is likely at least as much of an
issue for mothers as it is for their daughters, and it is as chal-
lenging, or “soul-draining” (Warner, 2005, p. 13) for their
well-being.
What are the tasks that these mothers must master, effort-
lessly or otherwise? First, whether or not they work outside
the house, upper-middle class mothers disproportionately
shoulder the myriad tasks of child-rearing and household
management. Fathers are typically the primary breadwinners
(Weissbourd, 2009) and often work very long hours, so that
mothers operate as the primary (and essentially, on an every-
day basis, as a “single”) parent. At this point, it is worth re-
membering what Hochschild’s (1997) seminal research
showed: that mothers and fathers, across socioeconomic
strata, prefer to be in the workplace than at home taking care
Fragility among the affluent 1533
of children, because the latter tends to be far more stressful and
emotionally draining.
If mothers are in fact disproportionately the primary parent,
then the quality of relationship with them should have greater
ramifications for the children, and this is what we have found.
In multivariate analyses of overall attachment (i.e., high trust,
good communication, and low alienation), felt attachment to
mothers as opposed to fathers explained much more variance
across teen adjustment dimensions, by at least a factor of three
(comparisons of overall R2s; see Luthar & Barkin, 2012;Luthar
&Becker,2002). These findings echo what has been recurrently
established across decades (Collins & Russell, 1991); preteens
and adolescents alike feel that their mothers know them better
than their fathers; and relationships with mothers are character-
ized by more frequent interaction and greater intimacy than
those with fathers.
Considering what our “pressured” children bring home to
their mothers, the parenting tasks confronting upper-middle
class mothers are prodigious. Within a hyperachieving, com-
petitive, and materialistic subculture, it requires enormous
fortitude to be a “good enough mother,” serving as a steadfast
ethical and moral compass (in a winner-takes-all milieu); de-
flecting each child’s high stress levels; maintaining consistent
affection and nurturance for all, and providing firm but reason-
able limit setting (amid rampant substance use and rule break-
ing among community peers). All this must be accomplished
while proficiently coordinating multiple busy schedules.
Whereas efficient multitasking may enrich mothers’ brains (El-
lison, 2005), there is a threshold beyond which it is pernicious.
There is also high potential for “contagion of stress” from
children to mothers, as seen in biological evidence of mothers
deeply affected by distress in their offspring (see Kim et al.,
2010; Swain, Lorberbaum, Kose, & Strathearn, 2007; Taylor,
2002). Felt emotional distance from teens affects both fathers
and mothers, but there are greater ramifications for mothers
because their identities are strongly associated with the mater-
nal role, and their own psychological well-being is more
strongly dependent on how well theirchildren are doing (Col-
lins & Russell, 1991; Ellison, 2005). Warner (2005, p. 116)
accurately describes “good motherhood,” in contemporary
upper-middle class America, as a state of being “almost al-
ways on duty,” and almost always beset with anxiety. Today’s
young women, therefore, may well be sensing or fearing their
mothers’ emotional role overload, given all that the latter con-
tend with.
Another potential source of concern for upper-middle
class young women lies in their mothers’ struggles with bal-
ancing family and work. Many well-educated women leave
the work force once they have children, because—notwith-
standing their labeling this as a “choice” (see Stone, 2007)—
they cannot get part-time workor flexible work hours and hus-
bands cannot or will not reduce their own hours (Coontz, 2013;
Luthar & Latendresse, 2005a; Slaughter, 2012). The losses of
“opting out” are profound, psychologically and financially. In
leaving paid employment, these women lose the rewards of
intellectual challenges, feelings of efficaciousness, and access
to networks of supportive relationships (Csikszentmhalyi, 1997;
Myers & Diener, 1995). Crittenden (2001) estimated that
the typical college-educated woman who opts out will lose
more than $1,000,000 in lifetime earnings and relinquished retire-
ment benefits.
Women who stay with careers are equally challenged. Em-
ployed professional women experience dual pressures of high
performance in careers and also as mothers (Luthar, 2003).
They put in the same long hours at work as their male col-
leagues. At the same time, they are less likely than men to
hold jobs that offer flexibility or family friendly benefits,
face more scrutiny and prejudice on the job as mothers than
fathers do, and are paid less than their male counterparts
(Coontz, 2013; Slaughter, 2012). Most importantly, high de-
mands at work do not imply diminished expectations as a
mother. The wage gap between men and women is paralleled
by a “leisure gap,” with most women working one shift in the
office and a “second shift” at home (Hochschild, 1989;see
also Slaughter, 2012).
Turning next to affluent boys and fathers, many more
young men today, than in the past, are concerned about
how they might balance active parenthood with their future
careers (Slaughter, 2012). Their white-collar professional fa-
thers can experience significant work-related pressures and
insecurity about job retention (Karp, Holmstrom, & Gray,
2004), given technological advances, global outsourcing,
and economic volatility. High-paying jobs imply high stakes,
and thus high stress. Missteps are costly, and the fall from the
top can be long and exceedingly painful. As Marano (2008,
p. 28) notes, “Working harder than ever just to maintain their
socioeconomic status, the affluent, despite all the accouter-
ments of the good life, live in a state of near-chronic stress.”
Cutting back to lower paying jobs is not an option, for
many reasons. Men’s sense of self-worth is often tied to their
success at work, and downward socioeconomic mobility is
enormously stressful for men at all income levels (cf. New-
man, 1999). In addition, some upper-middle class women op-
pose the idea of their husbands’ reduced work hours and earn-
ing potential (Warner, 2005), because in these families, it is
taken for granted that the children will all attend 4-year col-
leges, preferably elite (and expensive) ones (Holmstrom,
Karp, & Gray, 2011).
Finally, highly paid jobs often require a great deal of time
away from families. Taking “flex-time” is simply not an op-
tion for fathers in high-profile careers, and in the rare cases
where paternity leave is an option, takers are perceived nega-
tively (Harrington, Van Deusen, & Ladge, 2010). Further-
more, fathers in high-earning jobs often have long absences
away from home, and this can entail significant difficulties
in reintegrating into family life. Among fishermen’s families,
Mederer (1999) describes how wives (and children) report
difficulties readjusting their everyday routines to accommo-
date the man’s reentry after long absences. The same is true
for many fathers in affluence. Being shut out from the family
circle can exacerbate fathers’ feelings of alienation, and the
stresses of shifting routines constantly affects them, their
S. S. Luthar, S. H. Barkin, and E. J. Crossman1534
spouses, the quality of their marriages, and inevitably, the
children.
Research has demonstrated the nontrivial effects of fathers
on upper-middle class children. Even after considering rela-
tionships with mothers, attachment to fathers, and perceptions
of them as distant or harsh, are linked with girls’ academic
grades (Luthar & Becker, 2002), and in college, one in three
young women desires more contact with her father (Hofer &
Moore, 2010). More strikingly, among late-adolescent boys,
perceived paternal depression seems to be a significant risk
factor. Across three high school samples (Luthar & Barkin,
2012), we found that boys’ perceptions of fathers as being de-
pressed were linked with multiple indices of their own exter-
nalizing and internalizing symptoms. Plausibly, these patterns
are a by-product of identification with the same-sex parent. On
the brink of leaving home to enter the “real world,” these
young men may be particularly sensitive to fathers’ visible
emotional vulnerability.
Cohort Differences: Why High SES Might Connote
More Risk for Today’s Youth
Things are not what they used to be. Twenge (2006) has sum-
marized several ways in which “Generation Me” (coming of
age during the 1990s and 2000s) is different from earlier gen-
erations, and many of the negative changes can be especially
pronounced among upper-middle class youth. Consider the
pursuit of intrinsic life goals relative to wealth and status.
Among college freshman, “developing a meaningful philoso-
phy of life” was rated as an essential life goal by 86% of re-
spondents in 1967 versus 42% in 2004; parallel endorsements
for “being well-off financially” were 45% versus 74%
(Twenge, Campbell, & Freeman, 2012). Among high school
students, “having lots of money” was rated as very important
by twice as many in 1990 versus 1970, and expectations of
attaining prestigious, professional jobs changed from 42%
to 70% across the decades (Twenge, 2006).
Among upper-middle class youth today, definitions of
“being well-off financially” tends to be relative to what they
see in their own parents. It is much more difficult, however,
to maintain one’s parents’ standard of living in today’s com-
petitive, globalized economy, with growing barriers, for ex-
ample, even to enter the housing market (Steuerle, McKernan,
Ratcliffe, & Zhang, 2013). In one of our high school focus
groups, a young woman described “a sense of always trying
to measure up. . . . There is a continuous pattern of striving
to do better [than one’s parents] and I think that is continuing
with our generation, except the standards we are trying to meet
and to exceed are even higher than those of our parents.”
Besides personal aspirations, there have been generational
shifts in internalizing symptoms, with the average college stu-
dent in the 1990s, for example, being more anxious than 71%
of students in the 1970s and 85% of students in the 1950s
(Twenge, 2000). Among college freshmen in 2001 versus
freshmen in the 1980s, twice as many (one in three; see Astin,
2002) said they felt “frequently overwhelmed.” As indicated
by evidence presented at the outset of this review, upper-mid-
dle class youth are likely overrepresented among the current
generation of students experiencing inordinately high stress
and anxiety.
With regard to externalizing problems, reports of cheating
in high school were 34% in 1969, 61% in 1992, and 74% in
2002 (Twenge, 2006). Feelings of narcissism have changed
as well, with rates of college students agreeing with items
such as “I insist upon getting the respect that is due to me/I
will never be satisfied until I get all that I deserve” being
30% higher in 2006 as compared to the 1980s (Twenge, Kon-
rath, Foster, Campbell, & Bushman, 2008). Affluent youth
have the means to cheat in sophisticated ways and some
feel above the law, with parents stepping in to bail them out
if caught (Chase, 2008; Luthar, & Barkin, 2012).
External locus of control beliefs have risen as well, with
youth seeing their success as depending largely on luck, rather
than effort. In 2002, on average, students had more external con-
trol beliefs than 80% of their counterparts in the early 1960s
(Twenge, 2006). Believing that success is determined largely
by luck presages despair or learned helplessness, and is also
associated with impulsive actions like shoplifting and fighting
(Twenge, 2006). In academically elite schools, students are
competing with many other highly groomed peers. Further-
more, admission into a “good college” is decidedly more com-
petitive than it used to be, with the number of applicants to top-
tier institutions having doubled or tripled over the last 5 years
(Pe
´rez-Pen
˜a & Anderson, 2012). With so many similarly
well-qualified students, selection into the most competitive col-
leges does involve an element of luck (Schwartz, 2005a), if not,
as Tierney (2012) describes it, being “a total crapshoot.”
Finally, there are increasing assertions that today’s parents
problem solve excessively for their children, rather than al-
lowing them to acquire and practice everyday life and coping
skills (Marano, 2008; Mogel, 2010; Twenge, 2006). This can
only happen if parents have the money and time to run inter-
ference. Among affluent high school seniors anticipating de-
parture for college, sociologists describe being “struck by
how spontaneously, frequently, and uniformly the high
school seniors spoke about their uncertainty, fear, and anxi-
ety” (Holmstrom et al., 2011; cited in Marano, p. 61). Worries
were less about the academic challenges in college than about
how they would handle the logistics of everyday living: deal-
ing with a difficult roommate, trouble with courses, food not
to their liking, or a malfunctioning laundry machine. Once at
college, they reportedly seek parents’ (mostly mothers’) guid-
ance on everyday life tasks, communicating as often as twice
a day (Hofer & Moore, 2010).
Advances in technology may contribute also via unease in
developing intimate relationships. With texting and tweeting
rampant, teens tend to feel they are connecting with friends
online but in fact, they are disconnecting from friends in real
life (Akhtar, 2011). Recent reports have highlighted effects
on college graduating seniors. Because rendezvous typically
occur via instant messaging and Facebook posts, for example,
these young adults reportedly are often naive about the basic
Fragility among the affluent 1535
mechanics of traditional courtship. “They’re wondering, ‘If
you like someone, how would you walk up to them? What
would you say? What words would you use?’” (Freitas, cited
in Williams, 2013).
The Ecological Context: The Culture of Affluence and
Costs of Wealth
We turn next to the ecosystem (Bronfenbrenner, 1986): the
cultural context shaping the lives of upper-middle class par-
ents and children. Although the “American Dream” is predi-
cated on the belief that financial success creates happiness,
high material wealth can be associated with low psychologi-
cal well-being. Americans today have far more material luxu-
ries than they had in the 1950s (e.g., cars and electronic de-
vices), yet are no happier, and in fact experience much
more divorce and depression, and many more suicides (Di-
ener, 2000; Myers, 2000; Myers & Diener, 1995). “I call
this conjunction of material prosperity and social recession
the American paradox. The more people strive for extrinsic
goals such as money, the more numerous their problems
and the less robust their well being” (Myers, 2000, p. 61).
Before proceeding further,we note an important caveat: it is
not the possession of wealth in itself, but the overemphasis on
status and wealth, that compromises well-being (Luthar, 2003).
People who can comfortably meet basic life needs of food and
shelter face fewer threats to emotional equanimity than do
those who struggle to meet such needs (Diener & Biswas-Di-
ener, 2002). It is when riches go well beyond the point of com-
fortable subsistence (at about $75,000 per year; see Kahneman
&Deaton,2010), and preoccupation with acquiring still more
persists, that mental health isthreatened. In discussions that fol-
low, we consider various mechanisms via which affluence can
potentially exacerbate psychological vulnerability.
To begin with, relatively high affluence offers a surfeit of
choices (Schwartz, 2005b). Upper-middle class parents and
children can choose from a bewildering smorgasbord of “en-
richment opportunities” (Duncan & Murnane, 2011; Phillips,
2011; Reardon, 2013) in striving for what Lareau (2003) has
called “concerted cultivation.” Having a plethora of choices
can lead to constant worrying about whether each decision
(choice of sports team, or Advanced Placement, college-level
course) is the best one possible for the child’s resume, both
before and after the decision is made (see Iyengar & Lepper,
2000; Schwartz, 2005a).
The abundance of choices can also engender an inflated
sense of control over one’s life, and in turn, self-blame for
failures. As Schwartz (2000) has argued, the high degree of
autonomy implied by personal wealth leads many to believe
that they can live exactly the kind of lives they want. People
come to expect perfection not only in their lives but also in
themselves. Personal failures are then attributed to one’s
own shortcomings rather than to external factors, in turn foster-
ing depression and shame. Adults’ overestimation of what they
can actually control is echoed in what highly accomplished up-
per-middle class youth believe: that one more point on their
GPA and one more accomplishment will push them over the
edge to “success,” that is, acceptance to a top-ranked college.
Aside from illusions of control, another reason for en-
hanced vulnerability lies in the addictive potential of wealth,
because of rapid habituation. When individuals strive for a cer-
tain level of affluence and reach it, they quickly habituate and
then desire the next level up, becoming discontented when this
is not achieved (Brickman & Campbell, 1971; Csikszentmiha-
lyi, 1999;Diener,2000;Meyers,2000; Schor, 1999). What is
critical to recognize here is that although people in general
want more than they currently have, an emphasis on striving
for “the top” is hardest to resist among those for whom it is
actually within reach. As economist Linder (1970) argued,
the higher one’s earning potential, the less reasonable it feels
to devote time to pursuits other than further earnings; in Mar-
ano’s (2008, p. 28) succinct phrasing, the most accomplished
“have the most to lose from a day at the beach.”
In parallel fashion, among highly ambitious, achieving
youth, each new achievement sets the stage for pursuing an-
other. The skilled athlete enlists in competitive teams year-
round (field hockey followed by basketball and then lacrosse)
and the talented drummer plays not just for the jazz band but
also for orchestra and the pep band (with all the required prac-
tices and rehearsals). Academically, these students take every
advanced placement course they possibly can, even when they
are ill equipped to handle the stringent curricula (Tierney, 2012).
Also implicated in the psychological costs of affluence is
the phenomenon of “relative deprivation” (Csikszentmihalyi,
1999; Diener & Lucas, 2000; Myers, 2000), wherein people
evaluate themselves according to the standards in their own
immediate contexts. The basic desire for material improve-
ment is ubiquitous (Goff & Fleisher, 1999), but satisfaction
with one’s own status is based on comparisons with those
in one’s own circle or neighborhood, rather than one’s abso-
lute wealth (Hagerty, 2000). By implication, adults currently
in the bottom quartile of the highest income brackets would
compare themselves with those earning more than them,
and thus be apt to feel discontent regardless of their own ab-
solute wealth.
Among upwardly mobile youth, this can play out in intense
competition, with each academic award or extracurricular dis-
tinction zealously coveted by all eligible, particularly at the
most elite schools (cf. Chase, 2008). As would be expected,
envy is an unfortunate by-product of constant competition to
be “the best” (Marano, 2008). In recent analyses (Luthar, Reel,
Sin, & Thrastardottir, 2013), we found that as compared to their
inner-city counterparts, students at elite, upper-middle class
schools (especially girls) felt significantly more envious of peers
whom they felt surpassed them, across the realms of popularity,
attractiveness, academics, and sports (see also Chase, 2008).
Trade-offs of wealth versus intrinsic rewards
Life patterns associated with high wealth can thwart the at-
tainment of many critical socioemotional rewards. Tenacious
commitment to high productivity leaves little time to pursue
S. S. Luthar, S. H. Barkin, and E. J. Crossman1536
rewards such as friendships, art, and spirituality (Csikszent-
mihalyi, 1999; Deiner, 2000; Schor, 1999), and mental health
is compromised among people strongly invested in extrinsic
goals involving high status, relative to intrinsic goals such
as relationships and personal growth (Kasser, 2002;Ryan
et al., 1999; Sheldon & Kasser, 1995). In experimental re-
search, Quoidba, Dunn, Petrides, and Mikolajczak (2010)
demonstrated that the possession of (and even the reminder
of) high income was linked with reduced abilities to savor
the small pleasures in everyday life; low savoring abilities
in turn were linked to lower happiness.
There is a parallel among children, with little time for lei-
sure pursuits simply for fun. Upper-middle class children no
longer play impromptu games of soccer or basketball; as early
as the second grade, theyare (a) watched by fervent parent au-
diences as they play in “recreational” games, and (b) already
vying for spots in travel teams. Successes are very public, as
are mistakes. Reviewing the many benefits of play for psy-
chological and cognitive development (including beneficial
neural effects in the brain’s frontal lobe; see Panskepp & Bi-
ven, 2012), Marano (2008, p. 29) cautions that “What play
there is has been corrupted. . . . Kids’ play is professionalized;
team sports are fixed on building skills and on winning and
losing, not on having a good time.”
The highly scheduled, single-minded pursuit of achieving
more thwarts identity exploration. Although aware of many
college and career options, these youth deem very few appro-
priate for themselves (Lapour & Heppner, 2009). Accord-
ingly, they become preoccupied with becoming highly
marketable “commodities” (Peterson, 2000, p. 52), pursuing
activities chiefly if they will enhance their resumes. There is
scant time or space to pursue the Eriksonian (1993) explora-
tion of who they are as individuals, nurturing their unique
interests, passions, and life goals.
The driven pursuit of reaching “the top” can also bring temp-
tation to cheat,particularly for peoplewho have the resources to
get away with it. This is seen in increasing reports of already
very rich and financially adroit professionals resorting to
white-collar crimes for still more wealth (Stewart, 2012). Reso-
nant are previously noted reports of cheating at top-notch
schools and colleges (Anderson & Applebome, 2011;Pe
´rez-
Pen
˜a & Bidgood, 2012). These students can pay well to have
others do their assignments or take theirexaminations; if caught,
they have the hefty backup parental armamentarium of power,
money, and attorneys to bail them out.
Most seriously threatened within the culture of ever-up-
ward mobility are relationships: what Schwartz (2000) aptly
calls a critical “vaccine against depression.” In highly compe-
titive, capitalistic settings, wealthy people rely on market-
based services rather than voluntary help from their commu-
nities (Frank & Cook, 1995; Putnam, 2000), and thus they
miss out on “proof” of authentic friendships (Hochschild,
2011; Tooby & Cosmides, 1996). The rich, therefore, are
the least likely to experience the security of deep social con-
nectedness that is available to people whose circumstances
force them into mutual dependence (Myers, 2000).
In addition, a fierce investment in upward mobility can run
counter to concern for others’ welfare, and vice versa (Myers,
2000). Meaningful involvements in groups always call for
some subordination of one’s own interests to those of the
group. Conversely, when people focus intensively on maxi-
mizing their own goals, they feel increasingly disconnected
from the group around them (Myers & Diener, 1995). The
very attributes that make for success in the world’s market-
place, such as self-protectiveness and opportunism, can in-
hibit the development of intimacy because they represent a
generalized lack of trust of others (Warner, 1991). This de-
tachment makes for unhappiness, as seen in cross-cultural
findings of lower happiness in individualistic societies, on
average, than in collectivistic ones (Diener, Ng, Harter, & Ar-
ora, 2010; see also Jen, 2013).
Findings on American youth are consistent, as seen in our
previously described findings on poorer adjustment among
children whose own families emphasized personal success
far more strongly than personal decency and kindness. In ad-
dition, among college students, the least happy, and most de-
pressed, were those with weak ties to family and friends, and
low commitment to spending time with them (Diener, 2000).
High-status positions can also inhibit the development of
intimate friendships because of secrecy about one’s own
weaknesses. Affluent adults commonly struggle with shame
and guilt about their distress, because “Those at the top are
supposed to be better able to handle their problems than those
further down the scale; and a very important part of ‘looking
good’ is never letting any chinks in your (or your family’s)
emotional armor become visible” (Wolfe & Fodor, 1996,
p. 80; see also Weissbourd, 2009). In parallel, troubled youth
in these communities fear negative judgments and wide-
spread gossip about any disclosed adjustment problems (Ho-
fer & Moore, 2010), with many existing in a “culture of suf-
fering in silence” (Marano, 2008, p. 169).
Directions for Future Research: Quantifying “Risks”
Among the Upper-Middle Class
Turning from what we have learned thus far to issues meriting
attention in future research, the first order of business will be
to capture better the extent and generalizability of risks asso-
ciated with affluence. Particularly pressing is more research on
adolescents across diverse geographic differences: problems
documented in the Northeast and the Northwest (Luthar &
Barkin, 2012), and clinically described on the West Coast (Le-
vine, 2006), may not entirely generalize to other parts of the
country. We need also to explore variations by type of school,
including public versus private schools, those in suburbs ver-
sus cities, and same-sex versus mixed-gender schools.
Paralleling comparisons of teens in high-achieving
schools with national norms, comparable studies of young
adults would be invaluable, and this could be accomplished
relatively easily via anonymous surveys in colleges. As a be-
ginning step, in large lecture courses, psychology instructors
might administer well-normed instruments of distress and
Fragility among the affluent 1537
well-being. In pooling the data for cross-college comparisons,
institutional anonymity could be maintained by using, as
identifiers, rough percentile rank of each college sampled,
within the U.S. News & World Report (in the top 5%, 5%–
10%, etc.). It would be useful to know if denizens of the
most competitive institutions do report more stress or sub-
stance use, and are less satisfied with life overall, than are
those of ostensibly less prestigious schools.1
Going one step further, in the future, we suggest that col-
leges and universities systematically assess well-being on
their campuses, and even include these data among their “cre-
dentials.” Diener’s (2000) satisfaction with life scale has been
used widely to document cross-national differences, and the
same could be done for students and faculty at universities.
Ultimately, it would be optimal if data on campus well-being
were considered along with other institutional ranking indica-
tors such as richness of course offerings, selectivity of admis-
sions, and alumni donations. This information would be in-
valuable for students and parents as they select among
colleges, and it could also help colleges monitor, and even-
tually foster, positive psychological adaptation among their
students in addition to scholarly excellence.
Vulnerability and protective mechanisms in resilient
adaptation
Aside from examining mean adjustment levels across diverse
elite settings, we urgently need in-depth attention to the sub-
groups of youth manifesting unusually high distress, examin-
ing antecedents and sequelae of their maladjustment via pro-
spective, longitudinal research. Sophisticated contemporary
statistical techniques (e.g., latent growth curve analyses)
will be useful in (a) pinpointing the mechanisms that lead
to their problems, and (b) illuminating the degree to which,
and the circumstances under which, particular adjustment dif-
ficulties might endure or intensify over time. In addition, we
must explore the potential long-term costs of high disturbance
across different adjustment domains, and across different de-
velopmental periods. To illustrate, we currently know little
about the degree to which “socially normative” binge drink-
ing through high school and college might be linked with
lowered coping abilities, or compromised capacities to relate
authentically with others (sans substances) during the adult
years.
Conversely, we must understand what allows some youth
to thrive in the high-pressure world of affluence, with “thriv-
ing” defined via contextually relevant criteria. In resilience
research, positive adaptation (or risk evasion) is conceptually
guided and defined relative to the specific risk condition ex-
perienced (Luthar et al., 2000), with evasion of delinquency,
for example, critical among youth in high-crime, inner-city
neighborhoods. Among teens assailed by “do more, acquire
more” subcultural messages, therefore, we believe that a first
indicator of thriving would be a balanced set of values, with
behaviorally manifested commitment to intrinsic goals, integ-
rity, and low rule breaking. Refraining from excessive alcohol
and drug use would be a second critical criterion (acknowl-
edging that some experimentation before departure for col-
lege is developmentally normative). A third would be levels
of distress and of personal well-being that are in the normal
range for teenagers in general, and a fourth would be at least
average grades and extracurricular achievements.
Differentiating definitions of affluence
We will also need more differentiated, precise definitions of
“affluence,” just as we have worked for decades at refining di-
mensions of poverty (e.g., chronic, extreme, earned income
vs. benefits, and maternal education; see Hutto, Waldfogel,
Kaushal, & Garfinkel, 2011). There can be differences be-
tween income and wealth, and between earned as opposed
to “old money” (Oliver & Shapiro, 2006). Within affluent
communities, the parents’ job status can matter, with children
of parents of relatively low occupational status at heightened
risk (Richter, Leppin, & Gabhainn, 2006). Finally, we do not
know whether there are substantive differences between
youth from the upper-middle class as opposed to the most
elite.
Disentangling issues of race and ethnicity must be a prior-
ity. So far, developmental research on affluence has, in es-
sence, been the study of “Whiteness,” because upper-middle
class schools and communities are predominantly White. As
an alternative to school- or community-based sampling in fu-
ture research, we might tap into organizations targeting high-
achieving ethnic minorities, such as Jack and Jill of America,
with African American membership (Turnley-Robinson,
2013), to identify similarities and differences in challenges
experienced.
Specific research questions warranting attention
Aside from research directions already outlined, we delineate
three sets of issues that warrant concerted empirical attention,
based on what we have learned thus far about upper-middle
class youth. The first concerns the well-being of their primary
caregivers. That a “good enough” mother is critical for chil-
dren’s well-being has been established for decades (Winnni-
cott, 1953, p. 94); yet it is astonishing that there is still almost
no developmental research on what makes for a good enough
mother (Luthar et al., in press), especially those known to
be facing myriad challenges. This needs to be corrected: we
must have systematic research on primary caregivers’ well-
being as a dependent variable, illuminating predictors of sus-
tained positive parenting across a period of two decades or
more.
In parallel, we need more research on fathers (usually pri-
mary wage earners), documenting how the determined pur-
suit of highly paid positions, to sustain families’ lifestyles
and opportunities, can cause significant stress. Such assess-
1. We welcome collaborations with any colleagues potentially interested in
pursuing such research.
S. S. Luthar, S. H. Barkin, and E. J. Crossman1538
ments should occur not only at their peak earning years but
also closer to retirement. There is apparently high potential
for “sleeper effects” with affluent fathers, at the end of their
distinguished careers, regretting that they missed out on their
children’s youth and their partner’s companionship, having
focused for decades on what was expected from them rather
than on what they wished to be or do (Coontz, 2013).
The second issue is we need more information on the qual-
ity of marriages, from the perspective of children as well as
parents in affluence. At this point, we have no idea where
this metric might stand compared to national norms, but there
are suggestions of trouble. Both parents’ disproportionate in-
vestment of emotions, time, and money in children’s activ-
ities and needs must inevitably cut into couples’ time together,
and thus, threaten marital bonds (Marano, 2008; Warner,
2005). Furthermore, tensions can be exacerbated as parents
slide into the traditional division of labor in these families,
with wives resenting their disproportionate responsibility
for child care and envying husbands’ social networks through
jobs, and husbands, in turn, feeling unappreciated for long
hours at work to support the family’s lifestyle (Coontz, 2013).
The third issue is we need more attention to the social-
izing contexts of the school and peers. In our data collection
experiences across over two decades, the climate in school
buildings has varied greatly, with inner-city students being
much more spontaneously friendly than the affluent youth
(the more exclusive the private schools, the least ebullient
were the students). In future research, therefore, it would be
helpful to compare affluent youth on the values they believe
are truly prized within their schools, that is, the relative value
on extrinsic versus intrinsic goals (see Anderson & Applebome,
2011). It is important that even as some schools strongly
espouse “character development,” it will be critical to ascertain
if theyare committed not only to fostering grit and perseverance
(see Tough, 2011) but also equally, to other critical aspects of
character such as kindness, fairness, and integrity.
With regard to peers, there are two issues on which we cur-
rently have little quantitative data. The first is sexuality; we
need to understand the psychological ramifications of com-
monplace “hooking up” and casual oral sex (see Chase,
2008; Marano, 2008), especially for girls in relation to their
feelings of self-worth. The second is rampant and constant
competition among peers, and how this might impair intimacy
between friends (which is developmentally vital during ado-
lescence), and thus threaten youths’ psychological well-being.
Methodological concerns
Even as we suggest these various directions for researchers,
we recognize that access into exclusive schools and commu-
nities can be very difficult, because of intense and often legit-
imate concerns about privacy (Chase, 2008; Luthar, 2003).
For those with a foot in the proverbial door, it is critical to
gain the trust of the community, and that often takes time
(as in low-SES settings; Knitzer, 1996). Furthermore, once
research assessments are completed, the knowledge must be
brought back to the community, with collaborative efforts
to develop preventive interventions. In our experience, afflu-
ent parent groups, students, and teachers have all been invari-
ably not just receptive but eager to work with data that are (a)
scientifically rigorous, (b) presented with no judgments (our
message has been that this is about us and our children), and
(c) with specific messages about areas that merit attention.
Because we still understand little about the risks of afflu-
ence, researchers cannot rush to traditional “gold standards”
of complex, multivariate statistical models. Quantitative hy-
pothesis testing presupposes that we know what to test (Lu-
thar et al., in press), and we are only beginning to learn about
what is potent in the culture of affluence. In developing the-
ories about any new population, the building blocks must be
identified systematically, measuring as many relevant con-
structs as possible and then paring down to the essentials,
both within and across levels (Sheldon, Kashdan, & Steger,
2011). At this nascent stage of quantitative research on youth
in affluence, therefore, we will need to systematically de-
termine if “new” and potentially important constructs (a)
uniquely explain significant variance in adjustment, (b)
with at least moderate effect sizes, and then (c) seek replica-
tion of effects across different samples.
As we formulate and refine developmental theories, we
must remain attentive to insights from ethnographic, qualita-
tive data (Rutter, 2012; Ungar, 2012; Yoshikawa, Weisner,
Kalil, & Way, 2008). With over a decade of work with this
population, our own research group is still learning about
what might be especially important (fierce competition be-
tween “best friends”) and what might be a red herring (hours
in extracurriculars). Much can be learned if developmental
scientists borrowed methods from anthropology, being “par-
ticipant observers” of patterns in our own families and com-
munities. There is enormous power when academics
describe, empathically and in real-world terms, problems
about which they have firsthand knowledge (see Weissbourd,
2009; see also Carey, 2011; Jamison, 1996; Slaughter, 2012).
In a related vein, developmental research on this popula-
tion must entail rigorous exploration of within-gender pro-
cesses (cf. Luthar et al., in press). While equally committed
to their children’s welfare, upper-middle class mothers and
fathers can face vastly different challenges in the demands
of everyday parenting. Accordingly, it will be critical to ana-
lyze separately by parents’ gender, and in parallel, among
girls versus boys. Until we accumulate more data on within-
gender processes,we would be ill advised to control for gender
in statistical analyses, examining multiple interaction effectsin-
volving gender. Interaction terms are notoriously unstable in
statistical analyses, often obscuring important differences that
exist in reality (Luthar et al., 2000; Rutter, 2012).
In terms of research design, another tenet of develop-
mental science to be reckoned with is that self-report data
are biased and thus nonoptimal. We believe, in fact, that adoles-
cents’ own reports must be at the center of this work; there must
be concentrated focus on youths’ phenomenological, subjective
interpretations of their own realities (Spencer, 2011;seealso
Fragility among the affluent 1539
Latendresse et al., 2009; Luthar et al., in press). The “problem of
shared variance” can easily be corrected for, by simply covary-
ing out a third, robust self-report indicator (e.g., including peer
victimization in testing links between parenting and personal
adjustment; see Luthar & Becker, 2002).
In addition to self-reports, peer ratings are invaluable, but
in our experience, these are not easily approved by adults in
affluent communities. Ratings by teachers are easier to obtain
but can grossly underestimate adolescent problems; we have
found consistent elevations on rule breaking by self-reports,
and almost none by teacher reports (Luthar & Goldstein,
2008). Invaluable, in the future, would be reports from up-
per-middle class parents if possible, not only on their chil-
dren’s adjustment (particularly prosocial behaviors at home
and elsewhere), but also on their own perceptions of their par-
enting behaviors.
Future Directions: Interventions
Before discussing intervention needs, we must emphasize, at
the outset, that suggestions we will offer generally involve
the use of existing community resources. The scant public pol-
icy resources available for children’s mental health services in
America should be reserved for low-income groups; for the
affluent, what is needed is (a) increased awareness of risks in
their communities, and (b) help in advocating for the use of ex-
isting resources toward positive youth and family development
(Doherty, 2000;Luthar,2003; Wiessbourd, 2009). In discus-
sions that follow, we present possibilities for such interven-
tions, targeting multiple levels of influence and considering
specific targets of prevention, salient messages to be high-
lighted, and how these might best be conveyed.
Parents
Primary in our prevention efforts must be work with parents,
who have a redoubtable influence on the youths’ values and
well-being. In any efforts to foster resilient adaptation, it is
most expedient to prioritize, at the outset, forces that are (a)
amenable to change; (b) powerful, with large effect sizes;
and (c) “broadly deterministic,” that is, assets that in turn, cat-
alyze other assets (Luthar et al., in press). These criteria apply
foremost to families, even through late adolescence.
In terms of messages disseminated, parents need to ensure
that there is not an overpowering emphasis on extrinsic values
in the home. Recognizing the subcultural risks of violence
and crime, many inner-city mothers are particularly strict
about whom their children can consort with and when (Kling,
Liebman, & Katz, 2005). In much the same way, parents in
affluence need to recognize that they, more than their mid-
dle-class counterparts, need to be especially vigilant about
keeping their children firmly grounded in intrinsic values.
Families have to counterbalance the enormous reverberating
cultural messages that children must accomplish, at all costs,
ever more in pursuit of top-ranked colleges and the most lu-
crative jobs.
To do this, we as parents must be grounded ourselves, be-
cause our children internalize and emulate what they see in us
(Weissbourd, 2009).Ahighschoolgraduate(whometallthe
criteria for “thriving” we outlined earlier) spoke thus about
his parents in a focus group: “Most important to them is humi-
lity. For my mom? Helping others, and family has always come
first, even when she went back to work. . . . Both my parents are
not competitive. They work very hard because they want to suc-
ceed, not because they want to be better than others.”
In addition, parents will need to reflect carefullyon what is
critical, and what is desirable but lower on the list, in our prio-
rities as families. For example, there is undoubtedly much to
be gained by attending each child’s athletic events and perfor-
mances, for children and parents alike. However, there can
also be a danger of eroding downtime with unhurried conver-
sations and shared activities: interactions that form the core of
children’s feelings of security with their parents.
Firm and consistent limit setting is vital, particularly with
regard to substance use, and we fully acknowledge that this is
a complicated issue. As noted earlier, some experimentation
with substances is developmentally normative for teens.
Thus, “zero tolerance” parental attitudes with draconian pun-
ishments can backfire, with youngsters simply hiding use
while still in high school, using substances more easily hid-
den but also much more dangerous than alcohol (e.g., Ecstasy
and cocaine; see Chase, 2008), and once at college, engaging
in binge drinking (Califano, 2007; Chase, 2008). This said,
parents cannot be laissez-faire.Unsupervised parties involv-
ing unlimited alcohol are simply unacceptable; the dangers
are far too grave for adults to allow their occurrence (Luthar
& Barkin, 2012). Egregious violations of rules must be met
with firm and real consequences.
Mothers and fathers both must be vigilant for distress
among youth, expediently seeking professional help if indi-
cated (Koplewicz, Gurian, & Williams, 2009). In general,
parents seek attention only when children get poor academic
grades or are egregiously disruptive.2
Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Resilience is not
a unidimensional construct (Luthar et al., in press), and stellar
all-around achievements can coexist with high levels of de-
pression or anxiety.
Equally if not more important, parents must proactively
seek help if their marriages are strained. Upper-middle class
adults must recognize that resolutely “maintaining privacy”
when distressed can be extremely costly for the couple and
for the children. Thus, there is much value in disseminating
the benefits of couples-based interventions, such as those de-
signed to reduce conflicts around traditional gender role as-
signments (see Cowan & Cowan, 2000).
For practitioners working with children or with families, it is
critical to guard against minimizing problems of the affluent.
2. Among East Coast private school students (a sample described in Luthar
& Barkin, 2012), 63% of youth with clinically significant externalizing
symptoms had received professional help versus 32% who reported se-
rious internalizing symptoms.
S. S. Luthar, S. H. Barkin, and E. J. Crossman1540
Withthesameabsolutelevelofsymptoms,thepooraremore
likely to be labeled as mentally ill than others (Bradley & Cor-
wyn, 2002), whereas people in the upper-middle class are more
often dismissed as not needing help. Service providers tend to
believe that the wealthy cannot really be victimized by child
maltreatment and domestic violence, because their resources
can stanch these (Weitzman, 2000). Furthermore, affluent vic-
tims of domestic violence are often too ashamed or afraid, given
the power of perpetrators, to seek help. In the words of a coor-
dinator of a suburban community shelter, “Women come to us
only when they’ve really, truly reached their limits. They are not
just terrified, but deeply embarrassed. And they can’t see a pri-
vate therapist because they have no spending money” (Leder-
man, personal communication, December 10, 2012).
Support for mothers and for fathers. With the ever-increasing
publication of parenting books, well-educated parents are in-
undated with directives about what they must and must not
do, but there is distressingly little attention to fostering their
own well-being. This must be a central priority, and we offer
specific themes in this regard, in future work with both
mothers and fathers.
For mothers, we will need to document, recognize, and val-
idate the formidable demands on them in serving as the chief
executive officers of everyday parenting, across several years,
within the subculture of affluence. When a parent is depleted
herself, good parenting can feel impossible to sustain (Luthar
et al., in press). Our focus groups have recurrently shown that
well-educated mothers (like others) often know what they
ought to do in a given parenting challenge, but they often
lack the strength to follow through, given depletion from
the ongoing cacophony of multiple demands in the family.
We must help these women to ensure that they prioritize
their own “ego replenishment.” Intervention studies provide
the strongest test of cause–effect associations (Cicchetti & Hin-
shaw, 2002), and randomized clinical trials have shown that
when women feel nurtured themselves, they are better mothers,
and when this nurturance is withdrawn, they falter (Luthar,
Suchman, & Altomare, 2007). “Tending and befriending” is in-
stinctive for women (see Taylor, 2006), but with their extremely
overcrowded schedules, too many upper-middle class mothers
do not prioritize ensuring that they receive tending themselves.
In our focus groups over the years, many affluent mothers have
acknowledged the lack of authentic emotional support for them-
selves, just as they recognize their own diffidence in seeking out
such potentially invaluable support from each other (Hrdy,
2009), even when help is readily available.
Working with fathers is equally if not more important; in
recommending directions for change, Weissbourd (2009,
p. 198) notes, “Challenge number one: Expect more of Amer-
ica’s fathers.” Three important messages need to be con-
veyed. First, even with a superb mother, fathers are by no
means irrelevant: their involvement and support matters a
great deal for the well-being of their children, and of their
wives who shoulder the primary tasks of parenting. Second,
there is the critical need for them to seek help if they are
worn down by the demands on their own lives, because these
men can be particularly reluctant to seek psychological help
(see Bernstein, 2012). Third, these men are often in positions
of great power and influence; there can be enormous, benefi-
cial ripple effects if they were to set the tone for a healthy
work–family balance in their workplaces, modeling it them-
selves, and fostering it for others.
In terms of mechanisms for reaching parents, PTA groups
are the obvious first line of access to mothers, and potentially
through them, fathers as well. In our experience, women at-
tending these meetings are typically willing and eager part-
ners for change, open to messages not just about their chil-
dren’s troubles but also about the lack of “refueling” in
their own lives. These mothers may also be an initial route
to reaching fathers (see Cowan, Cowan, Pruett, Pruett, &
Wong, 2009), who will be harder to access given not only
their work demands but also lower receptiveness to psycho-
logical interventions, as noted earlier.
Finally, PTA groups constitute a valuable route to initiat-
ing community-level changes. In our programmatic research
with affluent schools, it has often been office-bearers of these
groups who initiated work with us to evaluate the well-being
of students, and subsequently, to help design community-
based interventions. Highly skilled and resourceful, these vol-
unteer mothers have been pivotal in obtaining the cooperation
of school administrators for research; in mobilizing resources
from local human services agencies; and in coordinating
fund-raising to support programs not just for children (e.g.,
after-school supervised centers for youth) but also for parents.
The latter set of initiatives have been an important step toward
reducing isolation, and fostering greater cohesiveness, across
families in the often impersonal, interpersonally guarded con-
text of affluence (cf. Luthar, 2003).
Educators. Working collaboratively with the leadership in up-
per-middle class schools, including school boards, superin-
tendents, principals, and PTA representatives, developmental
scientists need to help highlight issues of major concern.
Ideally, such dissemination should involve clear presentation
of scientific data (which these highly educated individuals
tend to respect) along with relevant media, where possible,
to engage their interest.
Of the messages that warrant dissemination, foremost, we
need to raise collective consciousness that status and achieve-
ment by no means imply equanimity of spirit; instead, their
relentless pursuit can powerfully thwart well-being. Toward
this end, researchers need to present accumulated findings
on the disproportionately high maladjustment of students in
contexts resolutely prioritizing accomplishments. At the
same time, it would be helpful to share examples of innova-
tive schools striving for balance in their goals for students.
For example, some top-ranked school systems such as Scars-
dale, New York, have discontinued all advanced placement
courses (Hu, 2008), as others, described by Marano (2008)
and Tough (2012), have instituted programs for fostering
curiosity, creativity, and character development.
Fragility among the affluent 1541
The use of media can be valuable in bolstering science-
based evidence on the dangers of overemphasizing achieve-
ments. The movie Race to Nowhere (Abeles, 2012), for ex-
ample, has resonated deeply with young people and parents,
as has Schwartz’s (2005b) TED talk on the paradox of choice.
Regular screening of such media could help mobilize com-
munity-wide change in attitudes, with concerned psycholo-
gists offering to lead discussions, not only with student
groups but also at teacher in-services and at PTA meetings.
While discussing risks of overemphasizing extrinsic goals,
it will be useful, simultaneously, to demonstrate how atten-
tion to intrinsic goals can be highly beneficial. Considering
generosity and spirituality, for example, helping behaviors
elicit neural responses in the brain, which in turn activate
the immune system, promoting resilience to disease and ill-
ness (Brown & Brown, 2005), just as the benefits of medita-
tion have been documented in brain scans (cf. Brefczynski-
Lewis, Lutz, Schaefer, Levinson, & Davidson, 2007). Again,
such scientific evidence can be presented along with relevant
media such as the film Happy (Belic, 2011), vividly demon-
strating the psychological and physical health gains of life in
close-knit, mutually supportive communities.
A second critical message for today’s youth is that they do
have meaningful, viable future choices of both colleges and
careers: that being at the “less than top ranked” can be highly
gratifying, and that conversely, high-status jobs can be ex-
tremely constraining in terms of time for family and leisure.
In this regard, we must document, as potential role models,
exemplars of “superstars” who walk away from top-ranked
jobs in favor of less lucrative but less time-demanding ca-
reers. Increasingly, highly accomplished college graduates
have turned down jobs at prestigious consulting firms to
work for Teach for America instead (Eidler, 2013). In paral-
lel, many adults eschew the hallowed halls of “top-tier,”
highly competitive universities (for themselves and for their
children) in favor of institutions with more balanced values.
As a senior professor in our focus groups said, “Four of
five colleagues I know well personally, all tenured and in
the prime of their careers, left their Ivy League schools for
‘lesser named’ places that fundamentally valued integrity
and decency.” Life narratives of such individuals could be
critical in fostering resilience in the face of unrelenting pres-
sures to achieve (see Hauser, Allen, & Golden, 2006).
The third message is that schools need to address rampant
substance use in affluent schools (in collaboration with par-
ents), because existing prevention efforts are not working.
A potentially useful strategy to explore, again, is demonstra-
tion of associated hazards as people tend to be “risk averse,”
strongly preferring to avoid losses rather than acquiring gains
(Kahneman & Tversky, 1984). Consider antismoking cam-
paigns in America, where evidence on the immediate and
long-term risks of cigarettes led to significant reductions in
smoking. Analogously, these (often very bright and ex-
tremely ambitious) students might be swayed against sub-
stance use by appropriate research data, such as pictures of
functional magnetic resonance imagings indicating effects
on the developing brain. As a high-achieving focus group
member affirmed, “Hell yes! I saw this stuff and quit smoking
weed every week. If it’s going to affect my brain, no way. . . . I
have to make the honor roll, dude!”
In designing and implementing any such interventions, a
major potential ally is leadership in the affluent peer group.
Dishion has documented the powerful phenomenon of de-
viancy training among peers, where youth reinforce each oth-
er’s drug use or delinquency (Dishion & Tipsford, 2011). Our
task, now, is to learn how we might achieve peer contagion of
a balanced set of personal values—with authentic commit-
ment to intrinsic aspirations and avoidance of unrestrained
substance use—enlisting the help of prosocial teens who
widely command respect among their age mates.
A final consideration in designing school-based youth in-
terventions is attention to gender-specific challenges (as with
efforts targeting parents). Groups for girls would need to ad-
dress, in particular, strivings for effortless perfectionism, and
the pitfalls of casual sex or “hooking up” with the attendant
heavy substance use (Califano, 2007; Chase, 2008). For
boys, we will need to address their overwhelming valuing
of money, power, and sex (Chase, 2008), and foster empathy
and nurturance, acknowledging that even as American wo-
men have increased in assertiveness across generations,
men have shown only a weak trend toward “feminine” nurtur-
ance (Twenge, 2006).
Aside from interventions for parents and students, there is
much to be gained by systematically supporting teachers in
their informal roles as mentors (Luthar et al., in press; Sabol
& Pianta, 2012) in high-SES schools as in others (see Kazdin
& Rabbitt, 2013; Suldo, Mihalas, Powell, & French, 2008;
Yancey, Grant, Kurosky, Kravitz-Wirtz, & Mistry, 2011).
Many adults routinely and voluntarily provide such support
to troubled students, and this is often a music/art teacher or
sports coach, rather than a school psychologist or a social
worker (Khan, 2011; Zelman, 2008). What is needed, at
this stage, is formalization of training and support for teachers
in this area, to enhance these beneficial relationships with stu-
dents in ways that are sustainable at the individual and the in-
stitutional levels (Hughes, 2012; Luthar et al., in press; Sabol
& Pianta, 2012). Let us remember what Emmy Werner’s
(1982) classic study revealed: that resilience stems foremost
from a strong relationship with a caring adult, within or out-
side the family.
Finally, the leadership of schools will need to unite in en-
suring timely care for youth already in distress, on both in-
ternalizing and externalizing dimensions. Educators in afflu-
ent settings can be reluctant to contact parents given fears of
their ire and even litigiousness (Luthar, 2003). Such reticence
can have grave consequences, allowing nascent problems to
escalate to serious and sometimes dangerous levels. With
the support of the entire school leadership, therefore, con-
cerned educators must proactively approach parents of chil-
dren who are troubled. Furthermore, in working with these
families, it will be critical to maintain empathy not only for
the students but also for the parents, because their overt wrath
S. S. Luthar, S. H. Barkin, and E. J. Crossman1542
and contentiousness often stem from intense underlying fear-
fulness, and even self-blame, for the child’s problems (see
Weissbourd, 2009).
Higher education. Beyond high school, several issues warrant
urgent attention at colleges, and many of these will require
collective, consensual changes across the leadership, that is,
presidents of universities. The first issue to be addressed is
the process of college admissions, and Schwartz (2005a)
has provided innovative suggestions in this regard. Noting
that with hundreds of highly qualified college applicants, se-
lection of the “best among the best” inevitably entails some
randomness. Thus, he recommends that colleges unite in hav-
ing admissions be decided by lotteries of similarly qualified
applicants. “Though a high school student will still have to
work hard to be ‘good enough’ for Yale, she won’t have to
distort her life in the way she would if she had to be the
‘best’” (Schwartz, 2007).
College administrators would also do well to limit the un-
necessary, and developmentally inappropriate presence, of
some upper-middle class parents on campuses, in what Marano
(2008, p. 179) has called the “eternal umbilicus” (see also Hofer
&Moore,2010). As one example, she describes (accurately)
how parents commonly attend one if not two intercollegiate
games every week, during the season. It would be useful if
educators were to restrict parents’ involvement, discouraging at-
tendance at games until the quarterfinals or semifinals. This
could take much pressure off the many who find these biweekly
trips onerous if not impossible, and for the athlete offspring, it
could avert their feeling like “orphans”: the only ones whose
parents are missing at regular postgame tailgate gatherings.
There have also been several creative suggestions about
campus-based routes to improving students’ well-being.
Weissbourd (2009), for example, has suggested enhanced
use of faculty mentors at colleges, with strong mentorship
track records credited at promotion and tenure reviews. Mar-
ano (2008) suggests a required yearlong program of dialectical
behavior therapy (Linehan, 1987) for all incoming freshmen,
to enhance constructive coping with everyday life challenges.
In addressing distressingly rampant substance use at colleges,
CASA’s (2007) report exhorts working with the administra-
tors (particularly presidents) to change the prevailing climate
on campuses condoning substance use, with clearly articula-
ted expectations and consequences of use of drugs and alcohol
among students (see Schwarz, 2013).
Policy and Dissemination
In considering policy directions informed by extant research
on upper-middle class youth, foremost, there is an urgent
need for organized, high-quality childcare. We must ac-
knowledge that many well-educated parents, even with two
incomes, simply cannot afford reliable hired help for after-
school hours, and “latchkey” children show high levels of
substance use as well as internalizing and externalizing prob-
lems. Lack of childcare is a critical issue facing American
families in general (Zigler, Marsland, & Lord, 2009), but in
upper-middle class contexts specifically, such initiatives
can feasibly be implemented using ample local resources:
not just finances but also the organization and work skills
of community parents.
In crafting organized childcare programs, upper-middle
class school districts would do well to draw upon innovations
designed and tested in less wealthy communities across the
country. Particularly promising is the CoZi model developed
by Yale’s James Comer and Edward Zigler, serving children
from birth to age 12. Program components include preschool
childcare as well as care before and after school, and vacation
care for school-age children, along with referral services for
families and training of childcare providers. There are cur-
rently over 1,400 schools across the country, and evaluations
have shown multiple benefits (Zigler & Finn-Stevenson,
2007; Zigler et al., 2009).
To attract and retain families, components of the CoZi
model school can and should be developed collaboratively
with the stakeholders (parents, and among older children,
the youth themselves), incorporating their priorities for home-
work as well as for fun, team sports, and field trips (Mahoney,
Parente, & Zigler, 2009). With hours of operation between
6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., these schools will allow both parents
to work outside the home, as needed. Youth involved in orga-
nized enrichment activities (such as team sports) could still
pursue them, with scheduled parent car pools, for example,
to students’ weekly practices.
A second major policy direction, stemming from extant
findings on upper-middle class youth, entails increasing
shift of business policies to allow parents to work from
home, and to limit the intrusion of work into family time.
Ready access to E-mail, instant messaging, teleconferencing,
and videoconferencing allow for collaborative and efficient
work, rendering it entirely feasible for many employees to
work from home at least 2 or 3 days a week (Glass, 2013;
Gupta, 2013; Slaughter, 2012). Encouragingly, we are now
seeing increasing trends in this direction. The legal profes-
sion, for example, is seeing a shift from the tradition of “bill-
able hours” that engender grueling work hours (Henry,
2011); alternative models entail different fee structures, vir-
tual firms, firms owned by women, and, as appropriate, the
outsourcing of discrete legal jobs. Recognizing the need to
maintain work and leisure balance, furthermore, some firms
have adopted policies restricting the use of electronic devices,
disallowing work-related E-mails from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.
on workdays, and entirely on weekends (Mohn, 2012).
As Slaughter (2012) has said, “Slowly, change is happen-
ing,” but this change could be accelerated, perhaps, if the
power brokers in business, education, and policy were aware
that their own children are at elevated risk. To reiterate, statis-
tics thus far show that youth in upper-middle class families
more often report serious adjustment difficulties compared
to national norms, and highly educated, white-collar profes-
sionals can put great heft behind changing policies seen as
personally relevant to them. Possibilities in this regard are re-
Fragility among the affluent 1543
flected in recent efforts targeting same-sex marriage. Report-
edly, more than 100 American corporations, ranging from
Tiffany and Armani to eBay and Facebook, have united in fil-
ing briefs to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex mar-
riages (Stewart, 2013). Companies have historically stayed
away from social issues, but senior officials reportedly saw
this as critical for the well-being of their own colleagues,
and thus for maximizing institutional productivity and reten-
tion of talent. Evidence on risks confronting their own off-
spring could, similarly, spur leaders in business and policy
to take a united stand on high-quality childcare and flexible
work schedules, benefiting families in local organizations
to start with, and ultimately, at the national level.
Disseminating for the public: Critical considerations
Finally, scientists must proactively and responsibly dissemi-
nate what we have learned to nonacademic authors, who
have a far wider readership than we do in science. In our
own programmatic work over the years, we have prioritized
sharing findings with trade book authors and media represen-
tatives as well as with contributors to high school newspa-
pers. Interactions with the latter have been especially gratify-
ing, as students have eagerly offered their own resonant
experiences, and have initiated active dialogues about the na-
ture of stresses in their high-achieving communities.
Missing in nonacademic dissemination efforts thus far,
and critical from a prevention standpoint, is outreach to afflu-
ent parents of young children. Publications such as Parenting
or Working Mother are avidly read by many well-educated
women. These mothers must be made aware of (a) the
long-term risks to their children, of embarking on a path
overly focused on achievements (which often begins in pre-
school), and (b) the critical importance, for families, of
shared leisure time, good communication and monitoring,
and firm limit setting, all starting from the earliest years. By
middle and high school (when problems apparently become
manifest), it will be extremely difficult to change family pat-
terns that have become well entrenched.
Finally, as we in science communicate our findings, we
must diligently guard against negative judgments and instead
disentangle and address the powerful ecosystemic (Bronfen-
brenner, 1986) forces that ensconce affluent parents and
youth. Oscar Lewis’s (1961) notion of the “Culture of Pov-
erty,” eschewed for decades because it implied “blaming
the victim,” has recently seen renewed scientific attention,
with thoughtful efforts to unpack the various components
of culture including values, symbolic boundaries, and cul-
tural capital (see Small, Harding, & Lamont, 2010). In the
years ahead, we could benefit greatly from parallel sociologi-
cal efforts in deconstructing the culture of affluence (e.g.,
Chase, 2008; Lareau, 2003). In the meantime, we, in psychol-
ogy, would be well advised to diligently avoid labels suggest-
ing character deficits, such as intrusive, entitled, or “helicop-
ters” for parents, and entitled, immature, or narcissistic for
youth (Luthar, 2003). Such labels are not just unhelpful but
also can potentially alienate the group about whom we write,
as well as policymakers (Hemingway, 2012). It is vital, there-
fore, that we always remain cognizant, in our reports, of the
powerful human tendency toward conformity in the face of
mores that are potent and widely accepted by members of
one’s social group (Hanlon, Carlisle, Hannah, Reilly, &
Lyon, 2011; Hogg & Vaughan, 2005).
Closing comments: Why more research on affluent youth?
In closing our discussions on future directions, we addressthe
question of why we, in developmental science, should devote
resources and attention to the problems of upper middle-class
youth (i.e., children of doctors, lawyers, and university pro-
fessors). To put it plainly, first and in self-referential terms,
we reiterate that these are our children about whom we are
speaking. Second, and more important, it is unconscionable
for us in science to deliberately disregard any group of chil-
dren known to be statistically at risk. Given what we know
thus far, it is essential to understand what makes for this
risk, to whom it generalizes and who is relatively untouched,
and what tends to both exacerbate and alleviate this risk.
From a pragmatic perspective, furthermore, these youth
will disproportionately hold positions of power in the next
generation, and their values will therefore be highly influen-
tial in shaping norms and mores in education, politics, and
business. Members of the upper-middle class are dispropor-
tionately the shapers and standard-bearers of American cul-
ture (Khan, 2011; Warner, 2005). Early trajectories of “gam-
ing the system” often end up in serious crime later inlife, with
white-collar crimes such as Ponzi schemes having enormous
negative repercussions for society as a whole. High envy
among these youth can lead to ego depletion (or eroded per-
sonal resources and self-control), in turn undermining mental
energy for everyday tasks (Hill, DelPriore, & Vaughan, 2011)
and also decreasing altruism toward others (DeWall, Bau-
meister, Gailliot, & Maner, 2008).
Aside from dishonesty, distress can have considerable
long-term costs. At a societal level, unhappiness and loneli-
ness can accentuate personal acquisitiveness as opposed to
philanthropy (Chang & Arkin, 2002; Diener & Biswas-Di-
ener, 2002). At an individual level, serious depressive epi-
sodes during adolescence connote elevated risk for recurrent
episodes later in life (Fava, Park, & Sonino, 2006). Prolonged
feelings of stress can affect not just psychological well-being
but also physical health via heightened allostatic load, and
productivity at work (Monroe, 2008).
Of special concern is the clearly high level of substance
use, which can affect the developing brain (Medina et al.,
2007), and can seriously impair effective coping over time
(Blomeyer et al., 2011; Brown, 2008). To be sure, some afflu-
ent youth will eventually grow out of substance use, particu-
larly as they come to marry and have children (Bachman et al.,
2002). However, many will show continued high use over
time, given the potent “risk factors” of chronically high use
from adolescence onward (cf. Brown, 2008), and social norms
S. S. Luthar, S. H. Barkin, and E. J. Crossman1544
of frequent use. This can presage problems in future relation-
ships, interfering with abilities to express affection and expe-
rience intimacy in adult relationships (Huselid & Cooper,
1992; Vargas-Carmona, Newcomb, & Galaif, 2002). Consis-
tent early use of substances can also compromise future work,
associated with relatively low earnings in adulthood and poor
job performance (Ellickson, Tucker, & Klein, 2003). With
students commonly using Adderall to maintain high grades
through school and college (e.g., Diller, 2012; Schwarz,
2012), it is unclear how they will manage when they come
to hold high-pressure jobs in their adult years.
Finally, the leadership of these youth will spread interna-
tionally given technology and globalization. The United
States is influential throughout the world and there is growing
pursuit of what is prized in America (Marano, 2008), even in
traditionally “collectivistic” nations. Frenetic SAT preparation
classes are commonplace in India and China, as are invest-
ments in technology rather than humancapital (Raina, Austen,
& Timmons, 2012). The future leaders of America, and of the
East, each need to understand the profound costs of blind al-
legiance to a “work more, and acquire more” ethic, especially
as it erodes the powerful “protective factor” of human bonds in
families and in communities (see Luyten & Blatt, 2013).
Conclusions
With “at risk” defined as greater than average statistical odds of
manifesting serious maladjustment, affluent youth in contem-
porary America clearly qualify for this label. Adolescents in
communities predominated by well-educated, upwardly mobile
families show inordinately levels of high drug and alcohol use.
More often than normative samples, they also show serious
levels of various internalizing and externalizing symptoms.
Diverse forces likely converge in causing this heightened
vulnerability in upper-middle class settings. In some in-
stances, disturbances in family functioning may be impli-
cated, as is true for youth across socioeconomic levels.
Also clearly contributing are peer group mores including ac-
tive admiration of disruptive, rule-breaking behaviors, espe-
cially substance use and sexual promiscuity (among boys),
and the high premium on physical attractiveness among girls.
Most importantly implicated is a national collective con-
sciousness that inordinately values achievement, with wealth
and status touted as ultimate life goals. Parents tend to prize
communities “where ambitious people who are driven and
smart can show . . . what it means to work hard and get ahead”
(Brenner, 2013). Schools reinforce this message, as do univer-
sities with criteria currently used for admitting students. It is
no surprise, therefore, that among our children the driving sen-
timents are essentially summarized thus: I can, therefore I
must, achieve: strive for the top, to attain what my parents
achieved. This is the central, imperative life goal; nothing
else is as important. Without such success, I will be left behind
as a failure, as others soar to great heights.
Obviously, pursuing financial success is laudable and essen-
tial. However, if the pursuit of status becomes a single-minded
preoccupation (as it tends to do, with each success leaving the
desire for more), our children, as do we ourselves, become
prone to high stress, unhappiness, and even dishonesty.
Shifting this pervasive mindset among today’s “Generation
Me” (Twenge, 2006) will not be easy, given recurrent exem-
plars of unbridled ambition among adults in power. Along-
side the ubiquitous cultural endorsement of ever-upward mo-
bility are media reports of rampant white-collar crime, not
just among leaders in finance but also among those in human
welfare, including healthcare professionals, religious leaders,
teachers, and administrators in education. Youth are there-
fore increasingly disillusioned about would-be role adult
models, well aware that for every publicized case of corrup-
tion, many others go unreported. Discussing morality in to-
day’s America, Weissbourd (2009, p. 196) quotes Jerome
Kagan’s disquieting conclusions: “Children and parents in-
ternalize the values of their culture, and our culture has be-
come more self-interested than it was in earlier generations.
There is not a balance between responsibility for community
and the self’s desires for enhancement. ...Wehavelostana-
tional consensus on what comprises a conscience.”
Juxtaposed with these somber words is Margaret Mead’s
heartening exhortation: “Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world” (cited
in Sommers & Dineen, 1984, p. 158). Our experiences across
15 years clearly show that in all upper-middle class contexts,
such groups of “committed citizens” do exist—within
schools, parent groups, community organizations, colleges,
universities, and the media—and researchers must prioritize
partnering with them. As Edward Zigler (1963)arguedinan
early seminal paper, much of the value of a promising devel-
opmental theory lies in its ability to guide human action. Let
us in science work assiduously, therefore, toward further un-
derstanding, and attempting to change, the salient vulnerabil-
ity and protective processes underlying the “social address”
of high parental education and income—just as we have
worked, for decades, at trying to accomplish for youth and
families in poverty.
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